Tues, 6/11, 9p-12a no cover @ The Mason Lounge 416 S Park St, Madison, WI 53715, USA Isthmus Jazz Festival presents the Five Points Jazz Collective CD Release show with Live Art!
“Don’t Worry About It” CDs $10
Entering Madison’s Mason Lounge for the first time, one immediately notices the quirks. The stuffed chicken in a henhouse in the wall, complete with straw. The action figures dangling from string, rigged up to move when someone opens the door to the restroom. The collection of neckties and paint can lids on the walls. Every element is so out of place, it somehow fits.
Like the décor, the Five Points Jazz Collectiveis quirky and disparate. Serving as the house band since the Mason opened in 2010, the Collective is an extended family of local musicians from varied backgrounds. Playing a mixture of jazz old and new, the group has evolved over the years from an open jam into a stable sextet with an increasingly large repertoire.
In its current incarnation, the group consists of Rin Ribble (violin), Eric Shackelford (drums), band leader Charlie Painter (guitar), Trey Grimm (keyboard), Kyle Rightley (trombone and euphonium), and Brian Grimm (bass and contracello). As Tuesday night regulars will attest, no two shows are ever alike. Listeners can expect to hear many subgenres of Jazz including swing standards, modal jazz, latin jazz, pop arrangements, blues, and funk.
Five Points at the Mason’s frozen back patio on set break – photo by Matthew Norman
About the CD Release
In collaboration with the Isthmus Jazz Festival, the Five Points Jazz Collective will be celebrating its first official album release! For 5 years the sextet version of this collective has played nearly 50 shows a year and decided it was time to lay down favorite selections of our vast catalogue. When listening to this debut album, you’ll feel the energy and spontaneity of the Five Points live sound with the buzzing atmosphere created by our regular fans. CDs and download cards will be available for sale at the show. Come grab your very own copy of this special recording captured live at the Mason Lounge!
Our CD Release will be made extra special with live visual artist contributions. Watch along as one of our most regular supporters John Ribble, plus special guest Jim McKiernan, create portraits of band members in real time to our music!
Live Drawing of me on bass at the Mason by John Ribble!
“Their sets embrace plenty of sinuous melody and conversational interplay, but can just as easily dive into minimalism and dissonance.” ~ Tone Madison
Experimental Jazz trio Brennan Connors & Stray Passage has been performing in Madison for the past 5 years, exciting listeners with a range of sonic capabilities. Their improvised music is directly linked to the atmosphere in the room and energy of the audience. The listener is such a crucial element in shaping the band’s sound that they recorded this album in front of a live studio audience – expertly captured by master engineer Steve Gotcher at Audio for the Arts. Listeners will experience a jazz trio that embraces both free and structured improvisation, original compositions, groove based experiments, and sound exploration. The breadth of a performance ranges from focused minimalism to fiery high energy music, all while maintaining a sense of narrative organization and compelling ensemble interplay.
The group is led by Brennan Connors on tenor and soprano saxophones. Geoff Brady orchestrates drum and percussion textures, while Brian Grimm rounds out the trio bowing cello, contra-cello, and electric bass.
We are ecstatic and grateful to setola di maiale records in Italy for officially releasing our first album!
We’ll be joined by a fantastic drummer & friend of mine, Hamir Atwal (San Francisco), with his trio Invisible Guy. The group features Michael Coleman on keyboard & Ben Goldberg on clarinet. We are very glad to share our CD release show bill with another trio that explores the dynamics of free-improv in full range!
“Mr. Goldberg is a clarinetist of range and curiosity.” – The New York Times
Ben Goldberg’s Bay Area-based trio looks forward and backward at the same time, creating both nostalgic reveries and modern statements. Goldberg is known for drawing on his Jewish roots and radical versions of Klezmer music and his clarinet work is always focused with an endearing lyrical quality. Pianist Michael Coleman leaps between stride riffs and electronic splatter. Drummer Hamir Atwall provides everything from a swinging undercurrent to a clattery rush.
As a trio, Ben, Michael, and Hamir are in strict pursuit of beautiful melody. Michael Coleman says: “Melody is the knife that cuts through to truth. Then there is the importance of breath, and personal expression.” Reviewing a 2014 concert, Howard Reich of the Chicago Tribune said the group is “an unusually focused ensemble inventing a musical syntax for itself.”
From 1992, when his group New Klezmer Trio released Masks and Faces and “kicked open the door for radical experiments with Ashkenazi roots music” (SF Chronicle) to 2013’s simultaneous release of Subatomic Particle Homesick Blues (featuring Joshua Redman) and Unfold Ordinary Mind (featuring Nels Cline), which the New York Times noted for “a feeling of joyous research into the basics of polyphony and collective improvising,” clarinetist and composer Ben Goldberg has shaped a career through relentless pursuit of musical truth across many genres and styles, resulting in the Downbeat Critics’ Poll naming him the #1 Rising Star Clarinetist in both 2011 and 2013. In 2015 Ben released a recording of his songcycle Orphic Machine , sung by Carla Kihlstedt and performed by an allstar nine piece band including Nels Cline, Greg Cohen, and Ches Smith. The LA Times called Orphic Machine “knotted and occasionally spooky composition marked by dazzling interplay.” All Music Guide says “Orphic Machine is wildly ambitious and sophisticated, but also graceful, emotionally honest, and accessible. It makes the profound embraceable and, as a result, is a masterpiece.” Ben currently composes for and leads the following groups:
Unfold Ordinary Mind ; Go Home ; Ben Goldberg School ; and Ben Goldberg Trio with Greg Cohen and Kenny Wollesen.
Drummer/Percussionist Hamir Atwal is a Berklee College of Music graduate who
has taught at Music Academy International, and the Stanford Jazz Workshop. Hamir is an active endorser of DREAM Cymbals. Hamir has played with saxophonists Joe Lovano, Greg Osby, and Grant Stewart; Bassist/Producer Bill Laswell; and clarinetist Ben Goldberg.
Michael Coleman is a pianist, improviser and composer currently residing in Brooklyn, NY. He has had the pleasure of playing with many great musicians and recording with some of his favorite bands and people. Apart from leading his own groups (Beep!, CavityFang, Young Nudist), Michael has toured the world with Chris Cohen, tUnEyArDs,
Sean Hayes, Miles Kurosky and Jug Free America.
Lovely Socialite (lovelysocialitemusic.com) “DoubleShark” ep release
Lovely Socialite, formerly Lovely Socialite Mrs. Thomas W. Phipps, is a Milwaukee/Madison-based six-piece that combines the aesthetics of modern jazz with contemporary classical, driving rock, and hip hop. Lauded for their bold and intricate compositions, the group often draws comparisons to Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. The band’s original music combines strict notation with moments of improvisation and maintains a healthy balance of dark and heavy rock grooves with quirky jazz obscurities.
Left Field Quartet at UW Madison, where they met and cut their teeth together on Jazz.
Left Field Quartet “Please Take Us Seriously” album release
Left Field Quartet is a collaborative group of Midwest-raised musicians specializing in eclectic, original music. With a unique and versatile tone, the group has scored plays and politically-charged events in the local community. What makes Left Field work so cohesively together is their adventurous desire for creativity in all of its multifaceted forms. “Please Take Us Seriously” is the band’s first official album release which combines gritty and fiery grooves with a personal touch and a playful sound.
And Illusions
And Illusions is a collaboration of local experimental musicians Emili Earhart and Michael Groome. With a focus on the psychedelic and long patient song structures, And Illusions occupies a wonderful space somewhere between noise music and kraut rock. It is at once meditative and soothing, a balancing act of angular and rounded tones.
“Orbis Obscura” is a 35 minute “sci-fi tone poem” for Pipa (Chinese lute) with delay & fuzz pedals by BC Grimm. Now available world wide on CD & Digital from Other Obscura Records! Other Obscura is a label promoting the compositions and improvisations of artists in Milwaukee, Madison and the surrounding areas. Est. 2016.
ORBIS OBSCURA REVIEWS
From Tone Madison, 8/10: “Brian Grimm is something of an experimental-music powerhouse in Madison.”; ” …one of the most sonically untethered things Grimm has put out there so far—which is saying something, and also not a complaint. He uses this eccentric but relatively stripped-down setup to veer through an array of warmly distorted drones, sticky pulsating rhythms, and layers of scratchy texture. The release is also the first from a new Madison- and Milwaukee-focused label, Other Obscura. ”
From Isthmus Daily Page, 8/12: “ Madison composer and cellist Brian Grimm’s meditative, experimental soundscapes blend modern improvisational styles with ancient Chinese string instrument technique. …Prepare to be transported into a beautiful dream.“
From Dayz Of Purple And Orange, 8/15: ” – a totally immersive, blissed-out trip that transports the listener away to distant climes…simply beautiful!”; “…glimmers of ‘sci-fi’ noises bleed through the drones. Over the course of the 35 minutes it totally immerses the listener in wave upon wave of gorgeous drones and otherworldly noises – utterly bewitching. ” (read: full review)
Cellist & composer Brian Grimm grew up surrounded by Chinese string instruments of every sort. After initial lessons in Chinese music with Yang Wei (pipa) & Daxun Zhang (bass) of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silkroad Enesemble, he was lucky to then study guqin (zither), pipa (lute), gaohu (fiddle) & daruan (bass lute) in Hong Kong with members of the 香港中樂團 Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra & Wuji Ensemble 無極樂團. Over the last 15 years Grimm has developed a deep language of Free Improvisation & Composition with groups such as The Brothers Grimm, Lovely Socialite, and Brennan Connors & Stray Passage. In conjunction with performing & teaching, Brian runs GrimmusiK Records – a label for all projects involving him & his brother AJ (classical & flamenco guitar).
